Sergiy Gusovsky, a Kyiv City Council member who has talked about an election rematch with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, was beaten and assaulted with green antiseptic in the council building on Oct. 4, receiving an eye burn.
Police arrested 19 people wearing identical green uniforms who were involved in the attack. The attackers accused Gusovsky of corruption in the allocation of land.
The National Corps far-right group, which was among the first to post video footage of the attack, was accused of being behind the attack. The group, which has been accused of having ties to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, denied involvement in the attack, but also lashed out at Gusovsky and accused him of corruption in the post.
“The events that took place today at the Kyiv City Council are shameful,” Samopomich Party leader and Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. “We expect not only the arrest of the perpetrators but also the identification of the organizers… Often law enforcement agencies turn a blind eye to brutal and criminal methods of pressure on municipal authorities.”
Gusovsky is a former head of Samopomich’s faction in the city council. On Sept. 7, Samopomich expelled him from the party for voting to allocate more than 1.4 hectares of land to fellow Samopomich faction city councilor Roman Marchenko. Gusovsky denied the accusations of wrongdoing, accusing the party of pursuing a political vendetta against him.
About 50 activists and whistleblowers have been assaulted in Ukraine over the past year. The organizers of the attacks have not been found by police.
Gusovsky ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2015, losing to Klitschko, the popular former heavyweight boxing champion.
